Focus on Software

Well, it looks like all the big boys (Red
Hat, Caldera, Mandrake, etc.) have thrown in their hats and said,
“Linux is not ready for the desktop.” At least that's the
message. Hey, Microsoft, you won without a fight! I don't know what
the CEOs of these companies are smoking, but it must be very strong
stuff. Everywhere I look, I see (and install) more and more Linux
desktops. And you know what? The folks for whom I do the installs
don't understand why they couldn't have a desktop before that was
this robust, this good, this inexpensive. But these now publicly
held companies I mentioned above are talking about 1) raising the
price and 2) charging a per-CPU license. As far as they're
concerned, the free ride is over. Time to pay the Linux
distributors. If I didn't find Debian's GNU politics so annoying,
I'd start using it. Maybe it's time to start my own distro? Or at
least one for my clients? At least that would eliminate the
unpleasant surprises that accompany each new release, and I could
decide what's best for my clients rather than using a distribution
whose creators seem increasingly out of touch with what's happening
with their VARs and customers.

Now this is nice (and convenient).
webCDwriter lets you surf over to
your web server/CD burner and burn a CD of files on your local
machine across the network. This is truly convenient, and any user
can do it. In fact, its simplicity and ease of use may be its
biggest drawback. You may find your CD burner is suddenly running
overtime burning CDs from all over your network. No more excuses
for not having a burned copy of important files and directories
because the CD burner is on a remote system, and it's inconvenient
transferring the files. Guess I'll have to invent yet another
excuse. Requires: Java, cdrecord, mkisofs, web server, web browser
w/ Java support.

This particular game is a cross between
Snakes and Nibbles, based
on the old DOS Heroes game. The graphics are
quite good, and game play is fast. The complete
Heroes code includes a large number of
soundtracks, more levels than most normal gamers can play in a
night and several game modes. Requires: libm, libmikmod,
libpthread, libdl, libSDL, libartsc, libX11, libXext, glibc.

This Perl utility takes advantage of
iptables or
ipchains logging and uses the
logged information to determine whether the system is under attack.
The parameters are highly configurable.
psad can send an e-mail to the
administrator when it sees a scan. The e-mail will include custom
whois information. This is a fairly simple but effective tool
(along the lines of courtney), but
it doesn't put your Ethernet card in promiscuous mode and will
watch only those ports you have logging on. Requires: Perl, Perl
modules: Socket, Getopt::Long, File::Stat, and Data::Dumper.

If you are very paranoid or just under attack often (as my
servers are), you can block offending IPs quickly and easily with
this tool. I tested it on my local system that does not run mail.
Telling it to block any host hitting port 25, I Telnet to another
system, then Telnet back to the local system on port 25.
Instantaneously, I had a rule inserted in the input chain. I had
told it to REJECT rather than use the default DROP, and the
resulting iptables rule showed a reject with port-unreachable.
Nice. This will be put to good use. Can also run external scripts
that e-mail you the output from a `dig -x <offending IP>`.
Requires: glibc and iptables (or ipchains).

This script, run daily, will look through your /etc/shadow
file and send an e-mail to any user whose account is about to
expire or be disabled. Personally, as an administrator, I like to
get the list and send out notifications where appropriate myself.
But if you have a lot of accounts or just don't want to bother,
this is the way to do it. Requires: Perl, Perl modules provided by
author (RcRecord.pm, spent.pm).

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